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Yesterday (never have time to write this up after playing until I should be in bed):

Lufrid brought the third (and, for now, final) set of tanks to Minmus Station Alpha, and the contract finally completed -- after some shenanigans with the station shaking apart on multiple loads (finally managed to turn off autostrut quickly enough after loading the save, in time to stop the shaking; then all was well). She was "honored" with being left in command of the station as Nelcan and Adeny returned to Kerbin -- leaving as much fuel and monopropellant behind as they dared. This leaves Mun Station Alpha with about 18,500 units of Lf/O on board, and tank capacity of 22,400; 595 units of monopropellant with tank capacity of 760. The station has maneuvering engines (an array of six Cub vernier engines) as well as RCS, so can change orbits and actively dock when needed (which is good, because Lufrid ran out of monopropellant twice in the three trips to bring tanks). Honestly, the station itself is probably capable of going anywhere in the system, if one doesn't mind very, VERY long burns...

That left one contract to fulfill from the current branch: two tourists wanted to visit the Mun, one to land. Monie was tapped to take them, flying a standard Mun lander (one pilot, two passengers, meant nothing special was needed in the lander other than disabling controls for two seats). After discovering that the crossfeed in the decouplers for the drop tanks had been disabled before flight (?!), she was able to land successfully near the Mun's south pole, and bring back a full load of science from a previously untapped biome. Fortunately, she discovered during her EVA (to plant flag, take surface sample, and file EVA report) that the assembly crew who modified her vessel from one originally built to carry four passengers plus the pilot had managed to leave off the main parachutes; she therefore had a Mk. 1-3 Command Pod loaded with science that had only a pair of drogues.

In the best Kerbal tradition, she first tried to self-rescue: instead of direct return, she set up an aerobraking trajectory, and after six passes (starting at 50 km Pe, working down to 42 km) had established a low enough orbit for everything to survive reentry -- except she'd noted enough instability to be pretty sure the ship didn't have enough pitch/yaw authority to keep retrograde through the denser atmosphere. That put the kibosh on her plan to use the transfer stage to thrust brake on a (hopefully) water landing and/or use the engine and tanks as a crush zone on land -- she'd never get the vessel low/slow enough, intact, to open the drogues.

That left one alternative: she used the fuel she'd reserved for terminal braking to stabilize in LKO, which left her inclined about 45+ degrees, and called for rescue.

As the ground crew rushed together a rescue vessel based on Explorer III (one of the earliest Munar flyby craft -- six stepped-thrust Thumper SRBs around a Swivel core, with Swivel upper stage, and a Mk. 1 Inline Cockpit with KLAW and RCS replacing the original Mk. 1 Command Pod -- Jebediah convinced everyone on the ground he was the only one to pilot the rescue craft. With tourists aboard, an EVA crew transfer wasn't possible, and the technology to add parts to a craft in flight doesn't exist; the only hope was to grapple Jeb's rescue vessel to the tourist craft and let Jeb's (gross overkill, for the vessel he'd be flying) parachutes lower the conglomeration to the ground. Jeb chose to launch from Woomerang, to match the target vessel's inclination without spending a bunch of delta-V (which his vessel didn't have to spare).

After several unsuccessful attempts to grapple the Mun lander by its nose cone, Jeb and Monie agreed on Plan B: Monie staged away the Munar transfer module, leaving her large, flattish heat shield exposed, and Jeb grappled on virtually dead center, first try. The rescue vessel's main engine provided thrust to deorbit the -- well, it's not quite a stack, is it? -- joined vessels, the engine and tanks were staged away, and Jeb set things up for reentry, his module leading the way. Despite an unavoidable slight misalignment (a few degrees tilt, a few centimeters off center), the combined reaction wheels had plenty of authority to keep the heat shields forward, and the KLAW held then the main parachutes deployed (that had been the one uncertainty in the plan), even though the combination flipped nose-down when the mains unreefed.

Spoiler

The slight misalignment is visible here -- looks bad, when one will be hitting heavy atmosphere still flying at Mach 6+, but didn't actually cause any problems.

If you're going to land nose-first, probably best you do it in water. Easier on the science gear in the nose...

Today in KSP I tried to build a super-manoevrable fighter jet to hurl Sepratron missiles at the VAB. The thrust-vectoring Panther engines allowed it to turn backwards during flight, but this tended to cause asymmetrical flameouts and total loss of control. Jeb survived both times but the Potato Laptop Kraken did not like this and crashed the game twice.

But I'm getting a new laptop this week! And looking at the specs, it will be a considerable improvement over my current one.

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Did lots of stuff today, came back to a game I had put on hold for a while (as always, 3x rescale)

I had left off with the delivery of a ISRU module and a hub/science lab module for my surface base, so the following is the surface base story:

Spoiler

The ISRU had refueled my dropship, so it was time to send it back up to get more modules:

It really is a funky design, I made this to prove a point after somone didn't like the idea of landing mk3 cargobays vertically and then doing a controlled tipover... this design is a bit hard ot handle because of the balance:

It gets ready to nom-nom-nom some modules:

Looks like they dont stick out enough, I should decouple one module from the other, not all the modules from the tug... but I didn't because... oops

It didn't balance right, but shfiting fuel to the rearmost tanks and not going full throttle was controllable, it could still manage a decent TWR on Mun without producing too much torque for the vernors to control, so I was able to land all the remaining modules in 1 trip instead of 2

The modules deployed, and the rover assembles to have a wide track. Its a science rover, and a habitat

The Habitat, has water recyclers and carbon extractors, plus a big food stockpile:

The assembled surface base:

Now.... I can attach the ISRU to the dropship externally, and had done so last time, but this time I drove it in the cargobay to refuel the dropship... it part clips like that of course, but it looks funny.... also when I duplicated the ISRU drills to make a water drill, I seem to have misplaced the texture for the dust that appears when drills are active, hence the weird effects... I need to go fix that:

But I wasn't done with the surface base yet... it is meant to supply fuel to orbit... in very large quantities:

Here comes the fuel tanker:

Then I attached the base to it, so the engineers, ISRU converter, and 6 large drills can get to work filling it while the scientists churn out science (ie funds at this point in my game, so its producing fuel and funds)

and I was nearly done... I had a small all in one ISRU craft in orbit, ready to land and start filling up. It was from earlier in career to "bootstrap" my Mun operations before the surface ISRU and dropship were around... I landed it nearby so that the engineer could go over and help it fill up faster as well.

Munbase 1, nearly complete... I am going to send a modded greenhouse part to it, with some water drills, so I won't need to resupply the base... although I will need to relocate it to a place with water... ughhh...

@Geonovast It turns out that I had tweaked my science rover since taking the pics I showed earlier, when I deployed my science rover, I found that the wheels don't clip in a way that you don't like... so this should be a stock rover that can deploy from a mk3 bay that gets your seal of approval (the hab rover largely avoids these issues as well)

*note, those docking port jrs weren't offset, that's just how they look when you stick them on the side of an oscar tank

I had also tried to see how viable flyback boosters were in 3x, since they don't seem to have any advantage over SSTO rockets in stock KSP... but SSTO rockets aren't really viable in 3x KSP, that story here:

Spoiler

The trajectory shortly after seperation of my first attempt. The first stage was a mammoth, the 2nd stage was a mk1-3 command pod, a jumbo 64 tank, and a skipper

At apoapsis, I reversed my horizontal surface velocity as precisely as I could... and it worked out pretty well:

The 2nd stage made orbit with lots of dV to spare, but not enough for a mun flyby in this 3x gameplay

I then did something like a falcon heavy, with 3x mammoths on the first stage. Instead of 3 skippers, I did 1 Rhino (same mass, better thrust, better Isp), and of course got better results... this could be a fully recoverable mun-flyby rocket:

I also did some more SSTO stuff, and had a minor incident returning a heavy cargo SSTO, also tried some IVA landings of a smaller SSTO, here:

Spoiler

So I flew up an ejector stage, for ejecting large payloads out of kerbin SOI, and onto interplanetary trajectories:

But I didn't manage full recovery of the SSTO... I was overshooting the landing, still going pretty fast, and I was pulling some G's to bleed speed, when a piece of the plane flew off... 1 wing section with ailerons... the rearmost control surfaces were reserved for pitch only, but I had to change that on the fly, I was able to land it, so I just went with it... it turns out that wing section + 2 control surfaces costs more than 5k funds... not a super large amount, but significant (I still spend many times more than that just on fuel, so OK)

Due to the poor vacuum performance of Rapiers, I thought that my spaceplanes in 3x might be improved with the use of Rhinos (I won't use OP wolfhounds). My mk3 cargobay spaceplanes without LV-Ns barely make orbit, this one made orbit with a dv of acouple hundred m/s more to spare, so I think its a success... its still a light payload. Its a module with a retextured science lab and retextured ore drills, that are now a greenhouse and water/ice drills:

I'm not sure if the middle wheel pair is needed, I think this could be a no clipping design

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@GeonovastYea, they do, I wish there were a way to lock them in place and have them steer like the RoveMax Model XL3 (ie tank style steering)

To make it fully stock, I'd have to fire up KSP and remove the TAC-LS hexcans that are surface attached. I found that it handles pretty well on Kerbin, but it can easily do wheelies on Mun if you try to reverse it (assuming you have it controlling from one of the docking ports that the external command seats face)... so I may disable the motors on the front.

I suppose that I could build a similar rover using I-beams instead of 1x1 structural panels if I really really really didn't want the wheels to clip when turning

It can flip over on Mun, but its a lot more resistant than the other rovers. Those 2.5m diamaeter rovers need to be treated very carefully. above 1.5 m/s, they can flip over just doing a turn on level ground... they are very poor at roving, I consider then surface base modules, not fit to travel more than 100 meters from the dropship. That science rover on the other hand, its a decent rover, and I'd be willing to take it several km to cross biome boundaries.

Well... I decided that it would be a good idea to speedrun my 380 meters long monster:

Everything was going well - 50 m/s at 170 meters high! Not bad!

But then I though it would be a good idea to raise the height a bit. Bad idea at that speed - when the nose raised about 5 to 6°, I started to get lift from the body - on the the front half of the vessel got lift to up, and the tail half got lift toward the sea!!! #facepalm

I lowered the buoyancy to zero, but the thing kept raising her nose. Then I realized: with 380 meters long, each half has 190 meters, but I was at 170 meters high.... #facePalm²

Without thrust (as the engines were kaput) and without buoyancy, when finally the thing loose speed (and lift), she plummeted into the oceans.... #facePalm³

No survivors. =P I will decline on commenting the ship's crew capacity. =D

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Set foot on Duna for the first time in this career. Initial landing was about 5km from a certain easter egg. Jeb & Val didn't feel like being bothered with the trek & Ambera Kerman (Bob's replacement) decided she didn't feel like going. So, Kelrik the engineer took the trip alone with just his trusty wrench. Spent almost his entire jetpack fuel getting there & had just enough left to get a good bit of altitude before becoming the first Kerbal to sky-dive on Duna.

Crew vehicle docking with the Duna lander:

Landing site & flag planting:

Hmm, what's that oddly shaped rock up there? Jetting up to see

Well, that was interesting. Second flag planting on top of anomaly, looking back towards the lander

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I don't like the current design for the lavatory so that'll change a bit.

I also redesigned the Munbus to make it much more modular:

The prototype didn't really need 3 engines, so I dropped two of them, made the fuel pods modular, and made the central tank replaceable. I can fit extra crew cabins, a cargo bay, or a mobile processing lab in place of the central tank. I also need to make a rounded variant of the hex port...